The Discovery Of Insulin During The 1920 ' S

Eli Lilly and Company has success in produce and sells insulin in the United States in 1923 and in 1995 Eli Lilly has dominated the world insulin market with another company. But Eli Lilly has miss some of its’ opportunity in diabetes care when it trying to sell its’ product to the world.

Insulin for diabetes was discovered in 1921 at the University of Toronto by Sir Frederick G. Banting, Charles H. Best, and JJR Macleod. James B. Collip subsequently purified it, and one year later on January 11, it was put to use on a young 14 year old boy named Leonard Thompson; a patient at Toronto General Hospital. Once the substance was delivered, it was found that the extract was so pure that he suffered an allergic reaction, and further injections were cancelled. James Collip worked for the next 12 days on improving the ox-pancreas extract, and the second dose given to Thompson on January 23 was completely successful. Prior to this, a type 1 diabetic would be put on a starvation diet, or be limited to a calorie intake of around 450 calories per day, and would only live a few extra months. Leonard Thompson lived another 14 years, until 1935 when he died of pneumonia at the age of 28.

First and foremost, Dr. Frederick Banting was able to isolate insulin and use it to treat the metabolic disorder diabetes which has benefited Canada. As a result, numerous individuals have been able to receive treatment which has reduced the number of deaths. This decrease in mortalities has also lowered the number of debilitating conditions resulting from diabetes. In fact, the mortality rate for diabetes over the past forty-five years has dropped by over fifty percent (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). This decrease clearly indicates that the death rates for diabetes is gradually declining. This trend can be followed from the time insulin was discovered and has increased the prognosis and quality of life for many people. In addition, the number of diabetes cases in Canada has risen by almost thirty percent over the past twenty years (Public Health Agency of Canada 2). Although, the number of people living with diabetes is significantly

One of the significant events that occurred in this decade was the invention of insulin. Frederick

After reading the first half of chapter two, The Analytic Project, I was most interested in the section titled, The Discovery of Insulin. I furthered my research of this area after reading and was able to better understand insulin and why it was such an important discovery. With that being said, diabetes was the result of malfunctions of the pancreas. Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was a disease that usually caused death, especially during the late nineteenth century. Many feared this disease, and according to A Philosophy of Science, A new Introduction, most people lost their life within a year of being diagnosed with the disease, even with the best treatment available at the time.

The development of insulin saved many lives throughout the 1920’s. Insulin allows your body to turn blood sugar into energy, and diabetes patients don’t have an important hormone called insulin. In fact, thousands of people had this issue. In the 1900’s, the only treatments for diabetes were starvation diets and very strict exercise program. Dr. Frederick Bating, the inventor of insulin, had spent a lot of his time studying the disease of diabetes. He thought if he could isolate insulin in animals, it would be possible to use it to treat people with diabetes. Later on his theory proved to be correct. Dr. Frederick Banting needed a lab to test his theory and work on it so he could have insulin mass produced and treat the disease of diabetes.

regulate glucose levels had artificially been altered (“The Discovery of Insulin”). The results were groundbreaking and the diabetic dogs responded well to the injections, marking a major step forward in diabetes research (“The Discovery of Insulin”). Through the help of Professor John Macleod of the University of Toronto, they were able to continue their research (“The Discovery of Insulin”). Finally, in January of 1922, testing Dr. Banting’s developments in diabetes treatment on human beings had finally been completed and the results led to the ultimate development of the insulin treatment that is still used to this day (Simoni, Hill and Vaughan 31).

Banting, in a letter to Albert Gooderham, a chairman of the Insulin Committee during the 1922 dispute between Banting, Best and Macleod on who discovered insulin, stated that Collip was the soul person to solve this problem. “Dr. Collip, stated Banting “...announced that he had developed a process by which he could obtain an extract which contained no protein and no lipase.” This is significant because Banting’s work and fame was carried out by other scientists, like James Collip. He was not the soul founding father of insulin, he was just part of a greater scheme of things that were being deduced in the 19th and 20th century that were vital in finding and isolating insulin. He had fix his problem by relying on someone who knew how to extract things better than him.

Before the discovery of insulin, diabetes was a feared disease that most certainly led to death. Doctors only knew that sugar made the condition worse and that the most effective treatment was to put the patients on very strict diets where the amount of sugar intake was kept to a minimum. At best, this treatment could buy patients a few extra years, but it never saved them. In some cases, the harsh diets even caused patients to die of starvation. During the nineteenth century, observations of patients who died of diabetes often showed that the pancreas was damaged. In 1869, a German medical student, Paul Langerhans, found that within the pancreatic tissue that produces digestive juices there were clusters of cells whose function was unknown.

When he survived the doctors had enough proof that it worked and could be used on diabetic patients all over the world. "With the relief of the symptoms of his disease, and with the increased strength and vigor resulting from the increased diet, the pessimistic, melancholy diabetic becomes optimistic and cheerful. Insulin is not a cure for diabetes; it is a treatment." (Sir Frederick Banting, Nobel Prize Lecture, 1923). There discovery of insulin helped change the world forever by finally finding the treated for a "disease with a previous mortality rate of 30% "(www.dww.com 2011). Frederick Banting was a man who focused on using the knowledge he possessed to help the health and safety of others.

In the year 1891, on the 14th of November Frederick Banting was brought onto this world in a town 60 kilometres north of Toronto called Alliston. He was the last born of five other siblings and lived in a middle class family. Frederick Banting was an average student and had a hard time in completion of high school. He decided to study arts, however he failed. Banting always dreamt of becoming a doctor and in September 1912, the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine, accepted him as a student (Nobelprize.org the official web site of Nobel Prize). Banting took a strong liking to the disease known as Diabetes. His studies and research, led him to understand that insulin has control over the metabolism of sugar in the blood (Nobelprize.org the official web site of Nobel Prize). On the night of October, 31, 1920, Banting got an idea from a medical journal. He believes that if you could extract the secretion made by the pancreas, then you can further understand and advance in the treatment of diabetes ((Library and Archives Canada). Banting made the decision of moving to the University of Toronto to reveal and discuss his idea with J.J.R. Macleod. Macleod provided an opportunity for Banting and Charles Best (his assistant), to start the work on May, 17, 1921 (Library and Archives Canada). Good timing and luck were the main factors which led the Torontonian researches to announce their discovery first. This is due to the fact that many scientists in Germany and Hungary would

World-wide, large portions of populations are impacted by a life-altering disease called Diabetes. There are many types of diabetes, however type 2 specifically tends to affect more people than any other type. Diabetes is a disease of the endocrine system and is the result of high blood glucose, or blood sugar, and the lack of insulin doing its job properly. In 1910, an English Physiologist by the name of Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer discovered the disease, diabetes. He also discovered Insulin while studying the pancreas. Using radioimmunoassay technology, Rosalyn Yalow and Solomon Berson in 1959 realized that there were notable differences between diabetics, which later became known as type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes

The discovery of diabetes came way back in 1910 when English physiologist Albert Sharpey-Schafer made the discovery of a substance that would normally be produced in non-diabetics. That would be called insulin. In 1976 the first insulin pumps were created. In 1978 the portable insulin pump is created and researchers got normal blood glucose levels on a patient with the pump. In 1982 the FDA approved insulin produced by genetically altered bacteria.

Generally speaking, most people are familiar with the term insulin and its dealings with diabetes. However, the amount of knowledge on how it works in the body is limited. Insulin is one of the most important hormones in the body for several reasons. The lack of or the excess of this hormone could potentially effect the body at detrimental rates.

However, our understanding of what diabetes is and how it operates has changed radically within the last hundred years. When considering diabetes, it is worth noting that medical science did not discover and isolate the